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In the Field (16) - ZaunköniG - 11.06.2008 In the Field I Two hours before the mist of morning paled Beneath a sun that never showed his flame, And spectral day stole on the world with sham, into the night unsentinelled theire sailed The whistling murder, sudden. Sudden wailed Shrapnel, and breaking cloud, began to claim Window and tile down clattering from the frame Into the littered causeway. Dreamers quailed, And propped themselves to listen, or rising, crept From corridors by fitful candle; then Gathered scared children down the winding stair, And only whispers passed where no one slept. And thought drew rein, surmising wildly, when The guns spoke murder over doomed Estaires. II "Stand to!" The warning word was hardly said, And had not moved a man, when round and round Forthwith the steaming kettles came to ground, And the men swarmed to dip their hasty bread, A soldier's morning bite. Still overhead murder flew hurtling, shell by shell, and found Earth in some rearward purlieu, quenched in sound. Breakfast began, but not a man was fed Ere the growled "Fall in" menacingly proved The dog's bone kinsman to a soldier's meal. We mustered, lowering, hungry. The ranks grew; And it was seen the world again had moved, As at the impulse of a groaning wheel, Unto some issue, from that first "Stand to!" III Unto some issue, Whither? No one dreamed What menace crouched behind that bankèd mist, Massing to bear down on us. No one wist What power that shrapnel covered as it screamed Futilely overhead. Scarce more it seemed Than many a day had happed, of trials the least, Vexation interruption of a feast, A broken night, a day spoiled ere it gleamed. But still the thickening barrage combed the air; Still whistling shrapnel sputtered into smoke; And momently the cobbed roadway shook With sickening thud where freighted monsters took The earth with double thunder. Here and there Blood trickled into hollows. No one spoke. IV The bridge across the Lys! A slender thread To bind or bar thy holders to their own; But one span, small and narrow, lightly thrown Over these sullen waters, lightly shed. Upon thy planks the heavy-booted tread Of men who seemed with sudden trouble grown Haggard. "What are you?" "Durhams." What is known?" "Our billet down, our officers are dead. We seek a new position further on." Position! Little recked they then how steep The way, how sure the ending. They were gone, And the keen harvester prepared to reap In fresh fields. The mourne blanket of the dawn Gathered the Durhams to eternal sleep. V The Church of Nouveau Monde! Lead on. This there We concentrate. There hung in the void street A local silence, which our sudden feet With lesser clangour startled in its lair, While, strangely, not the brood that racked the air Could break the boding hush of that retreat. So in a thnder-storm the quickened beat Of one's own startled pulses may impair The silence of a room which the onfall Of shafted noise o'erhead left deadly still. Perchance the mind doth place as on some plan The figured sounds which figured space do fill, Far or more near. 'Tis sure the hodding van Broke forward into silence virginal VI Waiting! A soldier's sacrament of strain, The eager cup of poising destiny, That may not pass from him till it is dry, And Death with peace, or Life unveils with pain. Full many in this demented play must drain That cup but once. Full many a soul must try It´s sharpness, till numbed sense hath lost the lie Of a life's landscape, smitten from the brain. Then in a falling twilight of the mind Their way into that temple oft they grope, Where from the true, strong human hand doth slip Life's vesture of live colours, meaning, hope, Purpose and fear, leaving dumb wont behind, While the word "Fate" drops dreaming from the lip. VII What of our comrades in the forward post? The fog of war but deepened with the day. We knew that in that troubled ocean lay Uncharted shoals, blind rocks, and treacherous coast. And what of yonder never-ending host Of wan, unwounded Portuguese? Ah, stay, Pale sergant. Do you bleed? You came that way? What is the tidings? Is the front line lost? "Nothing is known of posts that lie before Laventie. At the cross-roads hellish fire Has cut them off who shouldered the first load." Can they live trough it? "They can not retire, Nor can you reinforce. I know no more But this. No living thing comes down that road." VIII Still waiting! And the oozing hours have crept The morning out in vapour shot with fire, That struck now here now there in random ire Bloodily something human down, yet kept Alone stagnation at arm's length. Men leapt Suddenly to their feet, smith with a dire Surmise, collapsed, and huddled in the mire. No whisper passed. Some seemed as though they slept. Only the stolid bearers wound about, Shouldering their still and dabbled burdens white; Or sharply a familiar voice rang out, Comfortingly peremptory: "All right? Then keep together. Lie low. Do not doubt. The hour will surely come when we shall fight." IX Does the first softening of the season break The winter of Glenogle? Do the sighs Of wooning spring bid curling brackens rise On hillsides out of nothing for love's sake? How sweet it is to think that harebells shake Over Green Lowther, where the shadow lies Far in the Enterkin, beneath blue skies; In trance to see the catkined willows quake, Where April stirs along Loch Lomond side; To watch the sands of Morar gently take The Atlantic swell that softly combs the Isles; And through the gorgeous portals of the Clyde To hear at dawn the thudding paddle wake The ever-brooding silence of the Kyles. X There is a stillness in the heart of sound, How dire soever, if unloosed too long. There is a time for pause in every song, And in the whirling cyclone's heady round A core of peace. So the taut soul is bound With iron girdle, and with leathern thong To the acute wheel of the sense's wrong Only until the creaking spring is wound. Then softening come sweet phantoms of far things, Peopling the vacancy with joys unspent, And visions of fair spaces left behind, As if the genius of the place had wings, And in the migratory hour were sent To haunt awhile the silence of the mind. XI Back from it, back! The quelling mandate rang, As the mad moment swooped upon the dream. Straight heathered hillside, mountain, loch, and stream Flashed out of sight, and but the shrapnel sang, And greater guns with stunning double clang Rocked the earth under us. It well might seem All hell was in the air - not without gleam Of hope, the worst might prove the final pang. Men crouched together, shaken as they took That presence far too massive for their fear, A quivering sense that something tidal welled Over their perfect helplessness, and shook The core of being; yet that being held. We knew a limber clattered to the rear. XII 'Twixt Nouveau Monde and Laventie there lies A breastwork, where the clearing tempest found Tossed remnants of the cyclone come to ground, Part English, Portuguese in part. The skies Brightened, the housing spirit to entice Into the air; the string its length unwound, And nightmare, having pinioned, now unbound Our helplessness. The hour had come to rise. Alas, the lifting battle-fog proclaimed The line was gone, with those who bore the brunt, Our comrades, whom the fierce Valkyries claimed, Closing upon them in the bloody hunt; And Verey lights at hand too well explained The long and boding silence of the front. XIII Gray figures stealing, and a headlong dash from hedge to house, from house again to hedge, And fifty rifles levelled on the ledge! One instant on the aim, and then, the crash! He went to earth and vanished in a flash. And there once more was house, and there was hedge, With sprouting field, and farm, and ditch with sedge, And crop-head pollard row and leafless ash - A cheerless landscape gray, and the profound Loneliness of the battlefield. The next Moment trench-mortar shells were on our head; Another, and the day was sealed and fixed On front and flank. Among the stricken dead One in the skull, behind, his summons found. XIV - Found it behind, while yet his soul was set And his eyes eager with the death he planned For his foe forward, where he stood and manned His gun upon the roaring parapet. We knew the sign, the closing of the net, The baying of the pack on every hand, Terror of isolation. Still it fanned Some flame within. We were not conquered yet. Circled with unseen fire, we only heard The bullets whistle round us, only saw The solitude of battle. Nothing stirred. And yet, unseen, we felt his forces draw Upon us, earthed at length where earth had lured Treacherously to cover. We endured. XV A man dashed in among us and caught breath. A sergeant, resolute and silent, one That we who knew him trusted. He had run As men run only in the face of death, Yet had not fled. What is it that he saith? "The game is all but up, the end begun. Live men we shall not see another sun. Laventie North has fallen, a feast of death. 'Tis your turn, sir. Your left is in the air, And through the breach, five hundred yards away, His fours have marched on Sailly and Estaires." Column of fours? No! Then God save the day! These breastwork trenches! - 'Twas as if there snapped Some evilish mechanism on us - trapped! XVI How it befel? - The overreaching arm, Bombs; and he was among us. In his plan Surprise completed what surprise began. The treacherous shelter of a too-near farm, A ditch along a road, a false alarm, Thirty yards of the open; in the van A desperado running - How he ran! - And the pack had us. Hands up and disarm! -It is the end of all, the bitter end, The unpardonable, though ineluctable, A breach in life no living now will mend; The sin that sinned not; fell not, yet a fall. One thought burned in the brain: How dear it cost England to gain what I this day have lost! |